


the poison that's mistaken for a cure

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Post-Canon, but only sort of because this is constantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: Their trip has been a success—demons slayed, some balance to the universe restored—but all he can feel is death lurking behind him.It’s symbolism, he knows. The curse wouldn’t work if John wasn’t such fertile ground for suffering.Chas has died so many times for John. Because of John. It’s only fitting that Chas should be what finally brings John into the ground.





	the poison that's mistaken for a cure

**Author's Note:**

> the fic assumes john spent some time with the legends but mentions no specific events and is certainly not season 4 legends of tomorrow compliant. set vaguely in s3/post s3 of legends, if you care, but it really, truly doesn't matter.
> 
> zatanna is also in this, because melding canons is fun! remix until you get the canon you deserve!

John thinks it’s an extraneous bit of magic when a petal falls from his mouth. He keeps all sorts of things around for his spells, and the fact that a petal appeared is almost a relief. There are worse things in this section of the room alone.

It’s a pretty little thing. Soft and white. Flecked with red.

He’s forgotten all about it as soon as he heads to the kitchen.

*

He doesn’t know why he has this tickle in his throat. John rarely gets sick with normal, non magical ailments, and he’s lived in Atlanta long enough that it isn’t allergies.

Chas smiles at him, and John coughs into his hand. This time, he hasn’t been doing any magic, but there’s a petal on his fingers when he pulls his hand back.

There’s blood pounding in his head, because he doesn’t believe in coincidences, and two times is a pattern. He scrunches the petal up into his napkin, and waves off Chas’ momentary concern at John coughing.

“Just trying to get you to cook my food faster,” he says. “Before I die.”

*

“It’s a curse,” Zed tells him, when John dared to ask her to touch him and try to see something. “There’s so many petals, John.”

He can feel them in his throat, burrowing roots crawling through him. “How do I break it?” he asks.

Zed hesitates, her sweater sleeve catching on the rim of his glasses momentarily before she takes his glasses off. “I’m not sure you can,” she says, and presses their foreheads together.

If he’s dying—if he’s going to die from this curse—at least Zed and Chas will have each other.

“You love him,” Zed says.

_But he may not love me_ , John echoes into her head, and he goes slack against her.

“He might,” she says fiercely, so vehement that he understands now how survival comes to her as innately as her being.

John doesn’t know which of them is crying, only that when he begins to cough, he tastes salt water on his lips.

This time, the red flecks have expanded to drops of blood. A magical consumption.

*

“What the hell is going on with you?” Chas asks.

There’s a million places he could start. There’s things that he should say. When he opens his mouth, all he can taste is pollen in his throat.

“Isn’t it always hell?” John asks drolly, only sputtering on the slight question at the end of the sentence.

Chas’ face softens, and John wishes for more than he’ll ever get. If they were other people, if John hadn’t wrecked Chas’ life so thoroughly that Chas is just stuck with him, John might consider kissing him.

No one understands better or has been more affected by John’s battle against hell than Chas. 

“You aren’t alone against them.” 

John wishes he still believed in Chas’ promises, that he hadn’t been taught better by the universe.

Good men make all the promises they want, and even think they’ll keep them.

*

“You could magic it away,” Zatanna tells him. “I could do it, if you want.”

Things would’ve been easier if he and Zatanna had made it work, but they’ve always loved others more.

“What’s the catch?” John asks, reaching for the magical tea she’s brewed him.

Zatanna hesitates, her knuckles pressed to her mouth, like she already knows what John will say in response.

“You’ll live, but you won’t love him again.”

Magic is cruel, something he’s known from his beginning days, even when it was his only salvation. The curse is kinder.

He tries to imagine a half life, aware that he used to love Chas and chose to no longer, or the horrible option he’ll feel nothing more than idle curiosity about someone he loves so much it’s become physically a part of him.

“I can’t,” John says, even as petals rise like bile in his throat. “I’d rather this, than not have him at all.” He sips the tea, feels his chest loosen, and smiles when Zatanna grabs his other hand.

“I’ll keep asking,” she says. “There could be another way.”

He’s grateful she doesn’t bring up the possibility of Chas feeling the same way. That maybe he’s kept it somehow subsumed. Zatanna wouldn’t hurt him like that. She wouldn’t torment him with probabilities. John has spent enough of his life wondering if Chas felt anything more and all it managed to bring him was pain and mistakes.

John sleeps in her bed that night, their bodies curled around each other with the honest intimacy of those who loved and found something truer in friendship. 

*

Some days he wants to swallow a bottle of poison and cut it with acid, anything to destroy the windflower that’s killing him. Their trip has been a success—demons slayed, some balance to the universe restored—but all he can feel is death lurking behind him.

It’s symbolism, he knows. The curse wouldn’t work if John wasn’t such fertile ground for suffering.

Chas has died so many times for John. Because of John. It’s only fitting that Chas should be what finally brings John into the ground.

“It’s a curse,” John says, cutting off Chas’ tirade about how John needs to take better care of himself before it can begin. He wasn’t able to hide it this time, not when it was only the two of them, and there were no separate spaces. It’s not his fault that spell casting around Chas drained him so much he passed out.

He’s exhausted; it’s etched into his skin and his bones. He closes his eyes, sinks back into the headrest. The mechanical shake of the taxi is soothing in a way he doesn’t recall it being before.

“Then why haven’t we broken it?” Chas asks, more plaintive than John’s heard him in years.

John wraps his coat tighter around himself, his hands itching with a desire to keep occupied. He fumbles in his coat pocket for his cigarettes, wondering if the smoke would hurt or help. 

“Maybe it’s my time to go.”

Chas slams on the brakes, turn signal like a metronome, and John thinks, for a second time, that he might pass out. 

They aren’t anywhere when he opens his eyes. It’s a pull aside overlook spot, the kind of thing they used to do when they were softer people. He’s certain it’s beautiful in the day time, but there’s only a sliver of moon to illuminate the view. 

The car goes silent, the key turning off in the ignition. 

“You’re giving up so easily,” Chas says.

The tension stretches and John is almost grateful for the hacking in his lungs. He can’t hide the petals from Chas like this. There’s another one this time, maybe because he’s spent ten hours in the car with Chas.

“Flowers?” Chas picks up a petal and stares at it.

“Until my chest is overgrown and I’m a carbon dioxide factory. The petals are a clock.”

It’s a relief to say out loud. There’s power in admitting to the timeline. Chas grabs his hand, face stricken, and in a better universe John would heal.

In this one, Chas’ friendly contact makes him cough even more. His cigarettes fall to the floorboard, and all the things that are killing him can fit in this front seat. 

*

Chas keeps things light the rest of the way home: as much as their conversations ever manage to get with the talk of demons and possessions. Maybe it’s a concession to how much blood John coughed up earlier, but his luck only ever lasts so long.

Though Chas doesn’t ask, it’s clear that he’s waiting for John to tell him more. Death is a bit of a wound for them both and discussing a fatal curse certainly falls in that category.

Chas always looks through him, seeing what he hides, yet somehow missing how much John loves him. Maybe he thinks John isn’t capable of it. John wishes he weren’t. His life would be so differently if he hadn’t predicated so much on Chas’ existence. 

John doesn’t want to carry yet another secret from Chas to his ever looming grave. 

“I made someone angry,” John says, and tries not to laugh when Chas does. A typical John Constantine story, even down to the part where his life is at risk.

“Hence the curse,” Chas says.

John nods absently, trying not to get caught up in the way Chas’ hands move as he peels an apple. How steady Chas still is, when John is becoming more fragmented.

“The trigger was unrequited love,” John says. Despite the time he’s spent trying to figure it out, he hasn’t managed to figure out when the curse was placed. Unfortunately, John has a list of enemies as long as the demons who are waiting to pounce on him in hell. 

Half of that list overlaps.

“So what, it requires true love’s kiss?” Chas slides the plate with peeled apple towards John, one of his less subtle attempts at getting John to be healthy.

Chas has already started at work on another apple by the time John manages a smile.

“Is it Zatanna?” Chas asks, tension seeping into his shoulders. “I thought you two were long done, but if I need to talk to her…”

John pops a piece of apple into his mouth in lieu of an answer. 

“Sara?” Chas tries again. “I thought that was a fling.”

He chews and swallows, wondering if the apple seeds will cause a tree to spring up with the flower, the legends of childhood made real.

“Not an ex,” John says. “Just someone that never happened.” They nearly had, or maybe that’s just John coaxing his memories to be more charitable. To remember drunken almost kisses and the way Chas would settle in near him at the bar, preventing the both of them from getting laid.

“And someone else thought the best way to get revenge on John Constantine was to bring his death about while making sure he’s aware how absolutely unloved he is.” 

He’s out of breath when he finishes, throat heavy and thick and he can feel flower pieces trying to spill from his mouth. John wretches into his hand and the apple pieces wind up covered in sanguine anthers.

Chas really is killing him, and John will never be able to let him know.

“I’ve got you,” Chas says, shifting so that he can put his hand on John’s back. John relaxes against him. Chas says that like it’s so easy, when John only wishes it could be.

“You’re my best mate,” John says. He needs Chas to know that, even if he won’t explain how much deeper it runs.

It almost feels like enough, when he can feel Chas’ touch on his skin. When he closes his eyes and ignores the gasping in his lungs.

*

“Will you tell him?” Zed asks, running her fingers through his hair, curled under the blankets with him.

“He’ll blame himself,” John says, chest spasming with the thought of causing Chas any more pain than the lifetimes he’s already given him.

“Maybe he can fix it.” 

He’s lost count of how many times she’s said that to him over the months. That maybe there’s a way out of this, that each molecule of pollen isn’t counting the seconds until he’s down in hell.

“You can’t force someone to love you,” John says. “Not if you want that love to mean something.”

He kisses her forehead, light and soft, and is relieved he doesn’t leave blood on her skin. 

John doubts she’s satisfied with his answer. It’s rare that anyone is.

“He’d do anything for you,” Zed says. “How can you be so sure?”

Chas is already trapped and bound to John by virtue of those extra souls. Surely he doesn’t need more of John, not when he can feel the tension simmering under Chas’ skin, missed visitations and angry phone calls.

“He already has,” John replies. He doesn’t elaborate, even though she sighs.

*

“Someone better be dying,” John says, taking in the sight of Sara Lance sitting next to Chas at the kitchen table. He veers past them to get the orange juice from the fridge.

“What, other than you?” Chas says. 

John does deserve that comment. That doesn’t make hearing it easier, though, and he wonders how many minutes have been whittled off of him from that comment alone.

Just for that, though, he takes the carton to the table, leaving the glass he’d been planning to use as a nod to Chas’ practical sensitivities behind. Chas glares at him while John drinks from the carton. It almost feels normal.

“You know I don’t do teams, so what’s the emergency?” John asks, gaze fully set on Sara. 

“Actually,” Sara drawls, “you are.”

Bloody typical, John thinks. Can’t a man die in peace?

“Imagine my shock to get a phone call from you, but when I answered, it wasn’t you at all.”

Chas’ eyes flick away when John looks at him. 

“That phone has a password.” He curls his hand tight around the orange juice box.

“It’s my birthday.” Chas’ voice drops low, like it’s just the two of them in the room.

Stupid, unoriginal John using the most obvious important set of numbers. 

Sara touches him on the shoulder, hand light, and he’s missed her warmth, even as he feels exposed by Chas’ words.

“You didn’t tell us you were dying,” Sara says, leaning back. 

Like they aren’t all dying. Like it isn’t John’s past catching up to him all at once. Like he hasn’t seen the both of them come back from the dead at his hands.

“Well, I didn’t know at first, did I?” John snaps. “It wasn’t until Zed and Zatanna and I—“

And that’s another thing he was trying to avoid telling Chas. That he went to everyone else instead of his closest friend.

Sara’s eyeing him, a long look like she’s got him all figured out, but Chas won’t meet his gaze. John knows that tenseness in his shoulders and the terse line of his spine. John, of course, is almost always the one who put it there.

“Right,” Chas says. “I can die for you but not save you. Is that it?”

“You can’t always rescue me.”

Chas snorts at him. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?”

“As much as I love domestic disputes,” Sara says, “I came here to see what I could do.”

“Have you told her the cause?” Chas is looking between them both, hands clenched.

John pleads with the forces of the universe he doesn’t respect to not let this happen. “It’s just a curse—your ordinary, John pissed someone off type of curse.”

“You can’t fix it,” he says, addressing Sara, ignoring the way Chas bristles. “I’m not in love with you.”

Sara blinks at him, assessing. John doubts it pings in the weirdest conversations she’s had this week. John spent enough time on their ship to know that.

“I wasn’t curious, but thanks for the boost of self esteem, John.”

Chas rubs at his forehead, like he’s trying to subsume the temper John knows is lurking.

“What, you dragged her here thinking I was lying to you?” John is prodding, poking at Chas’ ill mood.

Chas doesn’t know Sara. He doesn’t know the Legends. Certainly not enough to be making demands. 

“Weren’t you? Aren’t you?” Chas asks.

John wants to rage at at Chas, to accuse him of wrongdoings in half tones. But he is lying to Chas, every moment he ignores how much he loves him. 

He’s too tired to lie, or twist the truth enough in a way to soothe Chas. “That’s what I’ve always done best, right Chas? It’s what you’re thinking.”

John has known Chas longer than he hasn’t at this point. He could easily identify all the ways Chas is holding himself in check, and exactly how frustrated he is with John. It’s the tightness of his neck, and the tension in his fingers.

Might be easier if John had ever been able to convince Chas to stay away, instead of this Sisyphean tango they’ve trapped themselves in.

As it is, Chas just shakes his head and walks away, something John is never quite used to.

*

“Impressive that he hasn’t figured out your big secret.” 

“Maybe he doesn’t want to.”

“He really did get a hold of me and convince me it was dire enough for me to come to this point in time.” Sara stretches her arms above her head, yawning. 

“He’s my best mate,” John replies. “Of course he did. More heart than sense.”

There’s no assuaging a death sentence. He loves Chas so much he’s willing to die for him—that isn’t new—but for it to consume him from the inside out, to burn through each cell is unique.

John thinks, _I love him_ , and the universe replies with the soft and slow agony he’s always felt on some level. 

“You told me, once, that love would be the death of you.” 

John has vague recollections of saying that. He hadn’t thought anyone was listening. Certainly not Sara, so freshly back from the dead in the grand scheme of it all. 

“I didn’t mean—“

“It doesn’t matter what we mean, John. The universe listens.”

He lights a cigarette, hands shaking, and takes a drag. 

It’s not so strange how John attracts people who come back from the dead. Strange is that he’s the one responsible for bringing them both back.

*

“Can’t I just give him some of my souls?” Chas asks, a desperate edge in his voice that he hates. John is the only one who ever makes him feel that distraught. 

He’s not used to John being constantly ill, to John shirking him, to coughing that doesn’t stop even when Chas hasn’t seen a cigarette touch his lips.

Zatanna shakes her head. “The magic involved in that might kill him anyway.”

The crunch as he slams his fist in the wall is satisfying—even though he can feel the wounds disappearing as he pulls his hand away.

“I’m not sure even the cure would work at this point.” 

Chas doesn’t know Zatanna well enough to tell when she’s bullshitting. Not like how he knows John, when Chas thinks he can tell John is lying before he even utters the words.

“What do you mean the cure,” Chas says lowly. 

He shouldn’t get angry. It won’t help him with John. But all he wants is to save him and to have more years with him. 

Chas has given up hope of anyone else, just to have John in whatever way he could. 

“Well,” Zatanna says. “John turned down the first option: excising the emotion of love with a magical scalpel.”

Chas’ heart constricts in his chest about how in love John must be. What John does is survive, and he’s never known John to give up that possibility.

“There’s a second option,” Chas presses, despite how he wants to linger on that thought.

“If the person John is in love with,” Zatanna says, “was able to make him know and believe they felt the same way…”

“You know who it is?” Chas asks. 

John won’t tell him, won’t let Chas go anywhere near the subject. Bringing Sara by was a calculated risk that gained him nothing than John’s anger. Chas wishes it were Zatanna, because no matter how much he distrusts her, he knows that she loves John. Then John wouldn’t be upstairs in bed suffering from an assault Chas doesn’t know how to protect against.

Zatanna stares at him, taking him in in such a way that Chas feels compelled to flinch, and then she scoffs.

“You say _John_ broke up your marriage?”

It’s a cruel query from an ally who happens to be his best shot at saving John. But there’s little point in denial. Chas would admit to anything if it would help.

“I was spending more time with him hunting evil than with my family.” Chas looks at his hands, at the bruise rapidly fading from his knuckles.

“You wrecked your marriage,” Zatanna says. “You chose John.”

Maybe it’s a sign of how desperate he is to save John that hearing his secrets casually slaughtered doesn’t provoke anger in him.

“I always do.” Two years ago, Chas wouldn’t have admitted to it. But now it’s a simple facet of his life that’s so weaved around John’s own.

“ _laeveR eht hturt!_ ” 

Chas isn’t trained in deciphering backwards spell casting. John had never felt there was much of a need, since Zatanna is an ally, he said. One of the many assurances John gave him about knowledge that could be useful now. _“I’ve got it, Chas. Don’t worry.”_

He braces himself but his wariness seems unfounded when the room doesn’t change.

“Go see him,” Zatanna says. “Or don’t. He doesn’t have much time left either way.” The anger in her voice could cut, he thinks, if it were something physical. 

“ _raeppasiD!_ ” 

The room fills with smoke and Chas coughs, his eyes burning as they try to adjust. He really is alone, Zatanna having left him alone using her magic that’s always seemed so different from John’s.

She’s had the time to make her peace, Chas supposes. Resentment sparks across his skin at the time she’s had with John that he didn’t. The ways she’s known John that Chas was never allowed to. 

But John isn’t dead, not yet, and there might still be a chance.

*

John is considering calling on a demon. There’s surely one powerful enough out there to break this curse, maybe even one who has a grudge against the person who cast it.

He runs his hands over the pages in one of his grimoires, enjoying the sparks of magical feedback from the pages. 

But even if John did manage to find the right spells and get an agreeable demon to possess him, there’s no telling what would happen if he was exorcised. John can’t let his final attempt at saving himself release evil into the world.

He feels the cough in his throat before he notices that Chas is walking towards him. He swallows hard, repressing like he does so often around Chas.

Chas ghosts his fingers across the spell book next to John, and isn’t it funny how John’s salvation and desolation are tied up in the same person.

“You saw Zatanna,” John says. He can feel it in the air around Chas. It’s the magical signature he knows best these days. He’s less sure what the hell Zatanna has done to Chas; there’s something strange in his presence. She would normally know better than to do anything too drastic, but John isn’t much of an imposing figure lately, and Zatanna could always see through his bullshit.

Chas shrugs next to him and their arms brush. The connection of the tightening of his chest and Chas’ touch feels so obvious that it’s only fitting Chas doesn’t realize. “She told me you turned down her offer of a cure.”

“If the universe is trying to teach me a lesson about selfishness…” Chas is the one who ends up suffering from what John does. He tries to imagine looking at Chas, being near him, and only feeling the strong bond of a longtime friendship. Even now, as ill as he feels, John still wants Chas close.

John hates the coughing that envelops him and he hates that it’s Chas’ concern that’s making it worse. Everything he wants is so close and he won’t get any of it. John’s vision slips between the razor sharp focus of Chas’ hand on his and the soothing, velvety blackness of letting go.

He doesn’t even get a chance to ask Chas about the spell Zatanna cast on him.

*

Chas can see the magic that infuses John now. He supposes that’s the spell Zatanna cast, although he can’t imagine how that will help him now. Old, patchwork pieces of protection spells that makes Chas wonder if the oldest ones date to childhood and the father John rarely talks about—but he has to drop the thought. He can ask John later, once they’ve saved him.

He can’t see John like this, crumpled and exhausted, and not touch him. Half carrying John to his bed tugged at him enough, but seeing John wan and listless and still is something more entirely.

Chas doesn’t care what it might look like to anyone spying in: if John is going to die, Chas can’t let it be unloved. Maybe he isn’t who John needs to have love him, but he’s here for as long as he can be.

He crawls into bed next to John, leaving the covers as a barrier between them.

“Oh, John,” Chas sighs. “Who the hell did you manage to piss off?”

John’s laugh chokes and turns into a cough. “Everyone but you, I think.”

John has been shying away from physical contact, avoiding Chas, though Chas has seen him curled up on the couch with Zed. 

The covers are Chas’ concession to John’s new distance.

“You can’t die on me,” Chas says. “That’s my job.”

“Man thinks he’s a comedian now that I’m near death, huh?” 

Chas presses a kiss to John’s forehead. There’s a shift in the magic around him, a ripple like it’s all been cleared away, and Chas sees it now.

He’s the one hurting John. He’s the reason the spells are twisting away, like Chas’ presence weakens them. 

He wonders if the newer spells are ones John cast just so he could stand to be near Chas.

He rips the blankets off of John, pushes them away, desperate to be closer. Chas slides his hand under John’s shirt and he can feel the curse working. It’s his touch that burns John; it’s no wonder John has literally been keeping him at arm's length.

“She told you,” John says, a fury creeping into his voice that makes Chas forget for a moment that this is anything but a normal day. He’d never thought he’d find John’s anger comforting.

Chas takes his hand off of John’s torso and shakes his head. “She showed me the truth,” Chas says. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks. 

It isn’t a fair question, not when he’s been hiding how much he loves John for nigh on a decade, and he’s terrified of the answer. 

“And add something else to your pile of guilt, mate?” John says it softly, voice defeated.

Chas doesn’t have an answer for that. The souls he carries give him a responsibility, but it’s one that ties him to John. Chas thinks about John, always bold and brash and assured on the outside, and how Chas sometimes wishes they didn’t have to fight every battle. That he could occasionally tell John it’s okay this time, that someone else can handle it.

“I’m tired of feeling guilty for loving you.” 

Renee tried to make Chas live that guilt, and succeeded for a while. He’d never been able to give her everything he should have, not when John so aggressively held on to him. Chas spent years wishing he could forget John, from when he proposed to Renee to the souls heaped on him to the past few months when it became clear nothing he tried would work.

Chas will never be able to separate himself from John.

They love each other so fervently that it’s burdened them both. But love can be good, too, and he and John deserve to attempt whatever version of it they can conjure. 

Chas doesn’t know how this curse works or how to break it, despite Zatanna’s explanation. He can’t let John die without kissing him. He’s selfish enough not to care what it costs either of them.

Magic might be a mystery, but loving John has never been. It became a part of him. He’s fought it for years, trying to protect them both, but as he presses his lips against John’s, he can’t remember why that was necessary.

John doesn’t kiss him back. Chas’ heart feels paper thin and uncertain, curling in on itself.

“You don’t need to lie, Chas.”

He wants this to be the curse warping John’s mind, not their own mess of years twisting each other around.

“I gave up everything to be with you, John. Even before—I was never going to be able to give you up.”

John laughs, one that’s twisted by coughing, even as he looks at Chas. “I wrecked your life. You just decided to make the best of it.”

He fits his palm to John’s face and watches for a flinch that doesn’t occur, though Chas knows he must be in pain.

“You are the best of it.”

His words hang in the air, almost palpable, as Chas holds his breath.

He does wish for a different life sometimes. But not one without John. Chas’ most picturesque fantasies involve a vacation house and Geraldine visiting on summer break, and the simplest ones are just catching a few days of respite between demons, eating takeout in bed and showers with hot water that doesn’t run out. 

Always with John. 

They’re foolish dreams to have but when it comes to John, Chas has never been anything else.

*

Chas is making breakfast—John can hear Chas’ talking under his breath even sitting at the table. A mundane bit of normalcy that he won’t out loud admit to enjoying.

John sighs—it still stings in between his ribs and his clavicle, and in moments of fear he swears he can taste pollen. 

He’s coughing in his seat, but that’s only because of his cigarette. Not that it’ll stop Chas from checking in warily if he coughs more than three times in a row.

“I’m fine,” he says to the tensing line of Chas’ back. It’s preemptive to say, really, but he’s been slowly scrubbing himself of the protective spells he’d cast on himself.

He has stronger magic now, forged by the reassurance of bonds that even Nergal couldn’t pull from him. John’s been researching new protection spells, softer ones, ones that acknowledge that love is its own form of protection. He looks at Chas, humming as he flips a pancake, and knows that love won’t be enough. 

Hell is waiting for them both to slip, and anything that says true love is stronger than evil is a bit of nonsense.

John has always enjoyed proving hell wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been languishing in my drafts for months and it's my end of year kick to finish all the things i've been putting off, so!
> 
> lots of people read this over the months i was writing it on and off and gave concrit, general feedback and encouragement, and impressions. Thanks all! extra big thanks to andre and sophia who gave incredibly helpful feedback and suggestions on this at various points in the draft. 
> 
> title is from 'i can't think about it now' by dawes.
> 
> this mostly happened because i was thinking about fandom tropes i don't get. hanahaki's disease is the primary one. that was obviously me tempting the universe, because then i started writing this. i like it better as a curse though, and not a seemingly common illness. it fits better with constantine and i enjoy it more that way!
> 
> you can find me on tumblr under the same username (for however long tumblr lasts), or feel free to comment here! thanks for reading!


End file.
